Grant Years: 2023, 2024, 2025
Canal Alliance provides direct services, policy advocacy, and community engagement to help Marin County’s extremely low-income Latino immigrants and their families break the generational cycle of poverty. University Prep (UP!) and College to Career (C2C) are their education programs for youth who reside in the Canal neighborhood of San Rafael, which is geographically isolated and densely populated with over 12,00 residents in two square miles. Sixty percent of families live below 200% of the federal poverty line.
UP! and C2C address the educational opportunity gaps by supporting first-generation youth to graduate from high school and complete a four-year college degree. The need for such programs is underscored in a study by Race Counts, which ranks Marin second among all 58 California counties for racial disparities.
UP!, a college readiness and success program, enrolls students in sixth grade and supports them throughout middle and high school. Designed upon research-based pillars to student success, UP! supports academic readiness, social-emotional skills, family engagement, college admissions, and financial readiness. During an afterschool program, students receive instruction in core subject areas, tailored to meet their needs, tutoring, workshops to address skill gaps, and daily homework assistance. A middle school career exploration component enables students to learn about careers that align with their skills, interests, values, and goals.
UP!’s social emotional learning programming helps youth develop self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. Students learn to access behavioral health services and their schools and connects them with the licensed behavioral health services offered on-site at Canal Alliance.
To support parents to effectively advocate for and support their child’s education, parents are required to participate in parent engagement nights, where they gain information about financial literacy, college knowledge, and financial aid. UP! staff also serve as liaisons between families and schools, while teaching parents how to navigate the system and connect families in accessing wraparound services to address immediate needs through other Canal Alliance services.
Once students graduate from high school, they are enrolled automatically in C2C, which provides ongoing academic and behavioral health support, scholarship assistance, and case management throughout their college years. C2C offers college-to-career services to explore options and access internships and mentorships. Students also receive job placement and retention services for two years after college graduation to ensure they can gain living wage jobs that offer career-path employment opportunities and coaching on financial literacy.
